


To Me You'll Always Be Ickle Diddikins

by weasleyred



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, I also like the idea of Dudley and Harry being friends-ish, I just like the idea of Dudley and Cho don't ask me why, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 05:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18336839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleyred/pseuds/weasleyred
Summary: Harry Potter gets an unexpected call from his cousin.





	To Me You'll Always Be Ickle Diddikins

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh I don't know what this is but my cousin told me about the idea of Cho and Dudley dating and it just kind of stuck with me. I don't necessarily ship them but I thought the idea was fun so I wrote this.

“Harry?” Ginny called out from the living room. “Someone's on the phone, they want to talk to you!” 

  Harry Potter, a 30-year-old man with a particularly odd scar on his forehead, got up from the kitchen table with confusion clear on his face. He never usually got calls, the only reason they had one was so he and Hermione could talk, but if it was Hermione Ginny surely would not address her as “someone”. As he entered the living room his wife stood completely still and held the phone as if it was an extremely old and fragile object, that might break if she put too much pressure on it. She quickly gave him the phone and backed away.

  “Who is it?” he mouthed at her as he held the phone to his ear. 

  “I think he said his name was Diddley Dursey?” she whispered back. Harry stared at her. Surely it could not be …

  “Hello, this is Harry speaking?” 

  A deep, slow voice spoke. “Hi, Harry. It's, uh, it's Dudley Dursley. Your … your cousin, you know.”

  Harry let out a deep breath. So it was him, his cousin. The boy who had made his childhood a living hell, but, he reminded himself, who seemed to have come to his senses after the dementor-attack. At least as much sense as you would expect from Dudley Dursley. “Blimey, Dudley. Haven't spoken to you in … What is it, 13 years?”

  “That sounds about right,” Dudley answered, and then silence feel. Neither of them spoke until Harry could not control his curiosity. 

  “No offence, ‘Big D’, but how come you called? Did you just randomly realise that you've missed my voice, or did you have something …?” he trailed off.

  A short silence followed before Dudley cleared good throat roughly. “I've met someone. A girl. Or, 4 years ago we met. We're now engaged.”

  “Oh. Congrats?” Harry suddenly wondered if he should have invited his cousin to his and Ginny’s wedding, perhaps it had been rude of him to not consider it. 

  “She's … She's pregnant. Expecting in December. Getting pretty big now,” he said and Harry could hear the beaming happiness through the phone, but he couldn't for is life understand why he was telling him this. “We're gonna name her Marjorie, after aunt Marge, and Mariette after her god-mother.” 

  Harry decided against commenting on the choice of aunt Marge as someone to name their daughter after. “Uh, that's great, Dudley. I'm happy for you. I'm sure aunt Petunia is going to spoil her rotten.” 

  Dudleys wallowed and let out a shaky breath. “I'm not … I'm not sure about that. You see …” he trailed off, seemingly at loss for words. “My girl, my fiance, she's … one of your kind. A witch.”

  Harry stopped dead in his tracks. He had not realised that he had been shifting around until then. What were the odds? Who would have thought that Dudley,  _ Dudley Dursley,  _ would find himself a girlfriend from the magical world? He felt a bizarre need to let out a laugh but didn't. “Oh,” he finally said.

  “And … And I know that I was a dick to you, your whole childhood and that I was horrible to you after I found out that you were a wizard. But after, “he let out a shaky breath and continued, “ _ That  _ night I think I realised that mum and dad was wrong. Magic wasn't  _ only  _ dangerous, it could be used for good too. And you saved me even though I did nothing but bully you and … I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I never had the courage to apologise, but I do now. When I found out about my fiance being a witch I admit, I was a little scared, but I knew that she wasn't dangerous. I knew that I loved her anyway even if she knows how to transform a cup into a … a whatever, she would still be the same. And I knew I had to apologise to you. You don't have to accept it but yeah. I'm sorry,” 

  Harry didn't speak for a moment. He was shocked, to say at least. He knew, deep in his heart, that Dudley had been terrible to him because his parents had taught him that. “It's alright, Big D. It was a long time ago. We're not kids anymore.

 

It was a cold January night when the phone rang again. Harry was home alone this time (Ginny had decided to bring the kids to Ireland to watch her play the Quidditch finale) and for some reason, he knew who it was before he even answered.  “Hello, this is H …” 

  “Yes, yes, I know. Is it normal for baby witches to change hair colour?” Dudley Dursley sounded exhausted and, Harry could not help but find it amusing, a bit terrified. “I'm home alone with the baby was sleeping with perfectly normal black hair, and now her hair is pink! I don't know what to …”

  “Dudley!” Harry shouted because he knew that his cousin would work himself up into even more panic. “Well, it's not very common, but it's not dangerous. She must be a metamorphmagus - that means she can change her appearance by will. There's no need to worry. When's your fiance coming home?” 

  “Cho? She went to buy diapers so she'll soon be back. She did the disappearing-thing.  She won't be mad at me for the pink hair?” 

  “No, she'll understand ... ” Harry said and then stopped abruptly. “Wait, Cho? Not ‘Cho Chang’ by any chance?” 

  A short silence followed. “Yeah, that's her. You know her?” 

  Harry rubbed his forehead absentmindedly and wondered how many more shocks he could take from his calls with Dudley. “Uh yeah, went to Hogwarts with me. A year above me though.” 

  The distinctive sound of a baby’s cries was heard through the soundings and then Dudley’s desperate hushings-noises. “That's cool, I'll say hi from you. Look, I've gotta go, thanks for your help!” 

  As the line died. Harry sat still for a whole minute, the phone still pressed against his ear. He then shrugged and went on with his day.

  
  


Ron found the whole incident hilarious. Harry had just told him about the metamorphmagus baby and his cousin being engaged to his ex-girlfriend. Hermione was off to work and told Ron to do something useful, so he had taken Rose and Hugo to Harry's place (“Well they need to socialise, don't they?”). They drank butterbears and watched through the window as Rose tried to teach Lily and Hugo how to fly on a broomstick, which quite frankly could have gone worse in Harry's opinion. At least they had not hurt themselves yet. 

  “So what do you think your aunt and uncle are going to say about having a witch as a granddaughter? They didn't like magic much, did they?”

  Harry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. To be honest, he had no idea. He knew that the Dursley hated magic - they had locked him up in a cupboard for eleven years to try and squeeze it out of him. Although, he found it difficult to imagine them disowning their Ickly Dudleykins. “Don't know. Haven't asked Dudley yet. It's … weird. I mean, am I supposed to introduce him to my family? Don't think he even knows that I three kids of my own. I never thought, or I rather hoped, that Dudley would be a part of my adult life. And then calls me and, you know, acts as a cousin should. I genuinely don't know how to act around him. I did say that I forgive him for our childhood, but does that mean that we'll spend Christmas together?”

  Ron observed as his eldest caught his youngest before the youngest hit his head on the ground. “Don't know mate. I've never had an abusive cousin. This is the kind of stuff you should ask Hermione.”

  
  


The third time his cousin called he had just gotten home from celebrating Ron's 31st birthday. He had spent a nice day at the Burrow's, enjoying Molly's incredibly cooking and suffering through Percy talking about some new regulation he was working on. When James managed to set fire to their old broom shed, he and Ginny had decided that it was time to go home. He was exhausted after putting all the kids to bed and was looking forward to going to bed with Ginny when the phone rang. He hurried to pick it up before it woke any of the kids up. 

  “‘Ello, this is Harry speaking?” 

  “Hiya, Harry. It's Dudley. I didn't wake you up, did I?” 

  Harry rubbed his forehead and sank down into one of the armchairs. “No, I was just about to get ready to go to bed. What's up?” 

  “Cho wants me to invite you to Margie's baptizing. I tried calling earlier but it went straight to the voice mail.”

  “... Does Cho know who I am? I mean, does she know that she knows me?”

  A short silence followed this before Dudley grunted: “I know that you dated in school if that's what you're worried about. I … I admit it feels strange, but Cho told me it wouldn't be weird if you came,”

  Harry sighed and looked out the window. It would not be weird meeting Cho. You could hardly call what she and he had had  _ dating,  _ and even if you did it, had been a long time ago. Cho had been invited to his and Ginny’s wedding, for Merlin’s sake. No, it was not Cho who worried him; it was Dudley. He had seen his cousin once since the day that parted all those years ago when they came back to England. Dedalus and Hestia were happy to see him again, but the Dursley's had stood awkwardly in the back without speaking to him. He did not blame them because he did not know what on earth you said to your relatives whom you hated after not seeing each other for over a year. After the awkward reuniting, Harry tried his hardest to pretend like he did not have any relatives left alive because he just could not bother. 

  “You don’t have to come, of course. Cho just wanted to invite you. I would send the invitation letter but I don’t know where you live,” Dudley spoke up and Harry realised that he had been silent for too long. 

  “No, no. I’d love to come. Should I bring my wife and kids?”

  “I-I didn’t know you were married. Or had kids. But yeah, sure. I’d love to meet your family. Always wanted to be an uncle,” to Harry’s horror Dudley’s voice seemed to thicken as if he was close to tears. 

  “Yeah!” he said in an attempt to stop any crying happening. Blimey, he did not want to deal with his cousin crying, that would be weirder than his cousin invited him to the baptizing. “Will aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon be there?”

  Dudley cleared his throat and said: “Yeah, but don’t worry. They won’t bother you, I’ll talk to them. I think they might have calmed down a bit on the magic-hysteria actually. Dedalus and mum have tea on the weekends, they formed quite a friendship in Brazil. And I think dad rather liked Hestia since she loved hearing about talk about drills.”

  “Oh,” Harry said, taking a back. From what he remembered neither of the Dursley’s had seemed to thrilled when they meet their guards. But if Dudley not only married a witch but also actively tried to repair their relationship, people obviously could change. “Well, what date and time is the baptizing?”

 

The baptizing ceremony went better than Harry could have imagined. His aunt and uncle had given him a look when he entered but had not gone to talk to him. If Dudley were to be believed (and he had seen Dedalus and Petunia gossiping later the evening) they did not hate magic as much anymore, but they obviously were not ready to apologise to him. It did not bother him much. Lily had been fascinated by the baby and refused to leave her side. Cho allowed her to hold the baby and Dudley took multiple pictures of the two. The baby Marge looked very much like her father in Harry’s opinion. From all the pictures he had seen of the babu Dursley, she was almost an exact copy of him. Except, of course, the black hair and slightly darker skin. Once the baptizing was over, Harry and Ginny went over to the parents with their gift. As Ginny and Cho talked Harry and Dudley stood with their hand in their pockets, unsure what to say to each other. It was Harry who broke the tense silence. 

  “Well, congrats, Big D,” he said and to his relief, Dudley smiled. 

  “You’re never gonna let that one go, are you?” he asked as he carefully moved the sleeping baby to her pram. “It was nice seeing you. And your kids, they’re nice. Especially Lily, such a bright girl for her age.”

  Harry grinned. “Don’t worry Big D, to me you'll always be Ickle Diddikins!”


End file.
